PV Gap

Mitchell Said:

How long will it take a NASA Rocket to leave our Solar System?

We Answered:

Voyager took off twenty years ago and just left the Solar System's outer reaches..... of course, that's a probe, not a rocket..... but then, too, a rocket wouldn't go much faster if any faster at all.....

Dawn Said:

Why don't space exploration vehicles fly up or down relative to the plane of our solar system?

We Answered:

Says who? There was a Nasa mission a few years ago to study the poles of the sun.
Most of the interesting things in the solar system are in the plane, though.

Pauline Said:

How much does it cost NASA and tax payers send on probes to the planets of our solar system?

We Answered:

The United States’ total budget is $2,770,000,000,000. Tax money going to NASA accounts for less than 1% of that money. For every dollar in taxes you pay, one cent of it is going to NASA. It is the smallest budget of all the United States’ major agencies. That 1% does not take into account the over-spending that is responsible for the all time high national deficit which would make that percentage even smaller. To get rid of NASA to save money would be like “getting rid of your cat so you can put the money you'll save on his food toward the purchase of a beach house in the Hamptons.”

Ron Said:

What can the Nasa Voyager I teach us after it has left our solar system?

We Answered:

Not quite left solar system yet.
It has just left the area where the sun's solar wind is pushing against the general low level vacuum of space. As our sun moves on its orbit of the galaxy, it is in real motion relative to nearby stars. Voyager has past the heliopause or so-called bow-shock of the sun's radiation.
But it is still very much in the sphere of influence of the sun's gravity.
The Oort Cloud is an area surrounding the sun with objects gravitationally bound to the sun. It extends perhaps 2 light years from the sun. Voyager is only 1 light day from the sun.

Voyager 1 is in the process of escaping the solar system at a speed of about 61,452 kilometres per hour (38,185 mph) or 523.6 million km per year, or about 1.4 million km per day.

Even at this tremendous speed, Voyager 1 will take at least 14,000 years (and maybe twice that or even longer) to emerge from the Oort cloud.

Only then can it be said to have truly left our solar system. Then it will enter the solar system of a neighbor star.

What is Voyager teaching us?
1) Space is big (we already knew that, but the lesson is being drummed in now). It takes a whole day for signals to travel one way from Voyager 1 to Earth.
2) That the electrical systems (well some of them) are still functioning after 30 years. Testament to the skill of all those people who designed and built and launched the craft.
3) That a machine can indeed function in the void of space. It still is able to keep its antenna pointed toward us.
4) It is still gathering data on the composition of the space it is traveling through. It is our first sample of data from such a great distance from Earth.

It is surmised that electrical power will fail completely by about 2025.

Helen Said:

how in the world does Nasa calculates the age of a solar system or planet?

We Answered:

They use spectral analysis to determine what the start is using for fuel. For example, our star is burning by converting helium to hydrogen (it's more complex than that, but I'm making it simpler.) Based on the ratio of helium to hydrogen that the astronomer can find (based on spectral analysis) you can tell how long something has been burning.

For example, in our star, if there was more hydrogen present than helium, you could calculate that the star had lived most of its life already. Since we know the rate that a star will fuse the two elements, it gives us a timescale.

Similar calculations can be made from stars farther away, adding, of course, how far away from us they are.

One star in particular, Beltegeuse in the Orion nebula, is due to go nova any day now because it has used most of its fuel.